This is a timely blog. Fadi Chehadé proposes a digital co-governance system to address current and future digital issues buffeting the world. He brings to this proposal his experience at the helm of ICANN, one of the key institutions in the digital governance space, and his subsequent work as a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.

Image: Rodion Kutsaev. Source: Unsplash.

The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on governments, the private sector, and civil society to establish new mechanisms to govern the digital world which “bring together all stakeholders – governments, the business community, the scientific community, the civil society … in creating some norms, some protocols, but not with rigid forms of bureaucracy, of regulation … it is clear to me this cannot be only an intergovernmental process.”

At the core of Fadi Chehadé’s proposal, is a decoupling of the mechanisms to design digital norms from the ones to enforce their adoption. This would enable a rapid norm design process at the speed of technology evolution, while respecting the role of governments to enforce such norms as they deem fit with legal and regulatory instruments.

Fadi Chehadé served the Oxford community in 2017 as a fellow of practice at the Blavatnik School of Government. The blog is a wonderful primer to everyone who needs to understand what needs governing in the digital world and why.